Love is a Laserquest
by tidalutopia
Summary: S4 AU where Charles pretends Elsie is just some lover. Drabble. Also on tumblr & ao3.


…_Do you still feel younger than you thought you would by now  
Or darling have you started feeling old yet?  
Don't worry I'm sure that you're still breaking hearts  
With the efficiency that only youth can harness…_

Elsie Hughes won't look at me. Well, she does, but not the way I look at her, not the way I've always looked at her. Since we met, since we first talked properly… Hell, since we've first kissed. We were young, stupid, I was amending mistakes, she was making her life easier. She wasn't like any other women I have ever met.

I have loved this woman since I've first laid eyes on her. She's like a blooming rose, always beautiful, and you know she's going to surprise you. The way she talks, the way she moves, the way she blinks her eyes seem to have been written by a sobered Tolstoi, or God himself. Such blessing to see her walking towards the girls she's after, to sit beside her at the church.

Sometimes I feel like she's toying with me, like she knows perfectly what I feel for her. But it has been decades since I've made any kind of remark on that matter. She has been talking about love and it's pros and cons a lot more openly now, like she has discovered it recently and she's studying it – and I'm sure if she had studied she'd become quite the scholar. I love how she talks about the world, and how she's so open to its turns, like she's turning in perfect sync with its every turn around its axis.

…_And do you still think love is a laserquest  
Or do you take it all more seriously?  
I've tried to ask you this in some daydreams that I've had  
But you're always busy being make believe…_

I remember her face when we first kissed. It was barely the turn of the century, and I felt her soft lips melt against mine like ice when the sunlight embraces… And her excuses, and her awkwardness around me for the next weeks. It felt like we were everlasting in that mere second… and we weren't. No one is. The truth is that we never talked about it again. One day she just started regarding me like nothing happened, like she took a medicine and she forgot it all.

Now… I can only be grateful to be beside her at the church, to have her near at dinner, to fill up her glass with the best sherry I can afford. Gratitude was what I learned to give her, because I can't give her my love. And only God knows that my love for her is so great… so big. When I heard she was sick I felt… I prayed to heavens above for them to spare her and take me if that was the imminent danger… She deserves living more new years' eves, more Augusts, rather than this coward soul of mine…! Yes, that's what I am.

I know her enough to know that she wouldn't go away if she knew the truth. She would accept it, and make me feel better with those reassuring words and warm hands, the only touch I'd ever have from her. She'd perhaps make me feel loved in other ways than rather her lips, her words and her hands… In ways I know she can do. Or perhaps she'd let me be so I could get my feet back on the ground and stop dreaming…

…_And when I'm hanging on by the rings around my eyes  
And I convince myself I need another  
For a minute it gets easier to pretend that you were just some lover…_

She's not a dream, she's quite real. She there, reading her book, talking her words, breathing her air. And I'm only a spectator to the perfection that Elsie Hughes… I can't find possible, coherent flaws in her. She'd make a good wife. She'd make a good mother. She'd have made my mother proud.

When I sit with her until late hours I always feel like I'm one step closer to her, like she has a certain gravity. Suddenly it's all about her, my actions reflect on what she might think of it… It's like I'm not my own but hers to keep. I'd love her to hear these things from me, and not other man.

But at least I'm happy she's here, and that at least I'm her friend. I'd happily give away all I have for her sake, my heart, my guts, my soul. She's the only thing that matters when I can have thoughts to myself.

I love you, Elsie Hughes… I wish you knew how much, how powerful, how fiercely this old, weak heart beats for you.

You won't be mine, I know. And for a minute is easier to pretend that you were just some love of mine.


End file.
